10 research outputs found

    Perceived Emotional Synchrony in Virtual Watch Parties

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    The appeal of many leisure activities emerges from “shared experience,” wherein participants feel an emotional synchrony with fellow participants. Essentially, participants’ emotions are enhanced by their awareness of and agreement with others’ emotional state. The physical presence of others has always been considered a necessary condition for such synchrony. Yet, recent anecdotal evidence suggests this may not be the case. Specifically, virtual settings (e.g., online gaming, live-streaming concerts) in which others’ physical presence is absent may also have the capacity to generate perceived emotional synchrony. Drawing primarily from shared attention theory, this dissertation explores conditions for perceived emotional synchrony in the context of virtual watch parties. It focuses on how such synchrony relates to positive emotional responses to the experience. Findings from a survey of participants’ experiences within virtual watch parties suggest that such experiences represent opportunities to connect with others, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Findings from an experiment involving those same participants suggest that, as expected, perceived emotional synchrony was positively associated with positive emotional responses: positive emotional state, overall enjoyment, and willingness to share the video with friends. Emotional synchrony rendered the experience more worthwhile. This relationship held while controlling for trait-like tendency to experience emotional synchrony and self-reported shared attention. Importantly, we were able to create this synchrony among participants who were physically alone as they watched an online event. Results suggest that shared attention, the perception that “we” are attending together, encourages perceived emotional synchrony in virtual experiences. Mentalization, thinking about co-attendees’ experiences, helped to explain the relationship between shared attention and perceived emotional synchrony. Findings from the experiment further suggest that the social context of shared attention further influenced perceived emotional synchrony. Perceived emotional synchrony was highest when backchannel communication, the exchange of text-based messages with other participants during the experience, was present. This was the case regardless of the level of shared identity between participants. These findings offer new insights regarding conditions for creating shared experiences. They demonstrate that others’ physical presence is not necessary for perceptions of emotional synchrony. Rather, a sense that others who are located elsewhere are co-attending to a shared event can contribute to such synchrony. Sharing attention encourages participants to think about others’ experiences and compare those to their own emotional states, resulting in a sense of connection. Further, these findings demonstrate the importance of backchannel communication in the creation of shared experiences. Whether participants identified with co-viewers, text-based exchanges provided a window to others’ emotions, adding to perceived emotional synchrony. Ultimately, the dynamics of emotional connection resulted in more positive emotional responses to a shared event. This insight has profound implications for leisure providers. Physical proximity is less critical if providers offer tools that enable the exchange of emotional information. In doing so they can render virtual spaces capable of supporting shared experiences. Such experiences have important implications for the development interpersonal relationships, individual and community well-being, and client repatronage outcomes. This exploration of perceived emotional synchrony is essential to our evolving understanding of leisure service delivery

    A Study on the “Coupling” Phenomenon in the Chinese Fandom of English Cultural Products and Intercultural Imagination of Fan Creation

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    This doctoral thesis examines the emerging CP fan culture in Chinese cyberspace and explores its representation in the Chinese fandom of English-language cultural products such as Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts. As a cultural category initiated by predominantly female participants for imagining intimate relationships between 2-dimensional characters and 3-dimensional real people, CP fan culture shares some cultural homologies and proximities with Japanese Boy’s Love (BL) culture and Western slash fan culture. However, existing research has focused almost exclusively on these two cultural subsets, which have a long history and transcultural influence beyond their geographical boundaries, and scholars have usually analysed them from the perspectives of feminism and queer theory, whereas there is a serious lack of systematic academic discussion of the distinctive connotations and local cultural characteristics of CP culture, which has become the centre of public opinion and the core of the cultural industry in China. Even the few English-language studies of CP fan culture tend to confuse it with BL culture and slash fan culture, and tend to discuss negative features such as the CP fan struggle and the censorship of homoerotic literature in China from a critical perspective. The present research uses the mixed methods approach consisting of aca-fan, online questionnaire (N = 136), textual analysis, feminism with ‘only daughter’ as a generational characteristic, postmodern culturalism, and intercultural fandom to construct a new theoretical system, which is committed to analysing how CP fans of English-language cultural products, as a transcultural fandom, engage in transmedia CP activities compared to early Chinese media fans and CP fans of Chinese-language cultural products based on the following five perspectives: 1. the genesis of CP fan culture; 2. the ‘setting supremacy’ that serves as a guiding principle in the creative approach of CP fan culture on two levels; 3. the preference of some CP fans for English-language cultural products; 4. the original La Lang CP created by CP fans of English-language cultural products; and 5. the fandom nationalism that caused the termination of transnational CP activities. Within this context, the present research defines for the first time a series of important concepts in CP fan culture, including the sense of CP, the intimacy of CP, the top/bottom character configuration of CP, La Lang CP, and the fandom nationalism of CP fans of English-language cultural products. Moreover, the present research reveals that CP fan creations abide by the rule of ‘setting supremacy’, dissecting the ‘2.5-dimensional setting’ which is the fundamental component of CP fan culture, and setting it apart from the ‘moe element’ put forth by Japanese ACGN culture researcher Azuma Hiroki and frequently misconstrued by Chinese fan culture scholars. Based on this, the present research uniquely proposes that the essence of CP fan culture is the creation and consumption of a ‘dynamic 2.5-dimensional settings database’. As a result, the present research focuses on the CP fan culture of English-language cultural products with both localised and intercultural characteristics, which not only reveals the cultural innovation capacity of female CP fans in the context of the grand narrative collapsing, as well as their willingness to question and transform the imbalanced gender-rights operating mechanism, but also effectively removes the cultural misinterpretation and stigmatisation attached to CP fans of English-language cultural products that are less visible. Keywords: CP fans of English-language cultural products, personal settings, worldview settings, setting supremacy, 2.5-dimensional settings database, only daughter, intimate relationshi

    A Corpus-based and Eye-Tracking Study on the Audience Reception and Processing of English-Chinese Swearwords Produced by Amateur (Fansubbing) and Professional (Prosubbing) Subtitling

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    Technological advances continue to enable the creation of more and more audiovisual (AV) products, i.e., films, TV shows, podcasts, etc., which are widely disseminated online and accessible to millions of diverse users across the globe. The translation of these AV products remains a significant challenge, resulting in increasing numbers of individuals and groups becoming online volunteers to translate foreign audiovisual products into their domestic markets, i.e., fansubbing – a contraction of ‘fan’ and ‘subtitling’. However, when translating culturally-sensitive information, particularly swearwords, there is reported convergence and divergence between fan-produced subtitles and professional/official subtitles produced by government-owned companies. This dissertation aims to explore the nature and impact of these similarities and differences. To do so, initially a corpus-based translation approach was employed to identify translation patterns of swearwords by these two groups. A corpus of 549,349 words in original English subtitle scripts was collated and aligned with 528,889 professionally and 543,522 non-professionally translated Chinese words from a diverse sample of 57 recent English films. The results showed mostly convergent practices, but fansubbing appeared to adopt a more vulgarising approach when rendering swearwords (55%) than prosubbing (46%). Informed by this corpus information, the study then employed an eye-tracking approach to investigate how audiences receive and cognitively process translated swearwords in films. An eye-tracking experiment collected data from 150 participants who were allocated into one of the five subtitling groups to watch four representative film clips: four different groups for translation strategies of swearwords ranging from low to high profanity, and one control group which saw only the original English same-language subtitles. Established measures of Total Fixation Count, Total Fixation Duration, Mean Fixation Duration and Time to First Fixation were analysed using a series of one-way ANOVAs. In general, these eye-tracking results showed no significant differences between the swearword translation strategies in terms of processing and reception. Pre- and post-task questionnaires were also employed to collect demographic information and qualitative feedback, in addition to the receptive measurement of immersion, satisfaction, enjoyment, comprehension and offensiveness. Generally, there were no significant differences among these measurements across all clips. Further, participants reported functional awareness of swearwords, which helped them to understand the observed characters’ emotions and feelings. As a result, they reported an expectation for a more authentic translation of swearwords that closely reflected the real-life usage of the target audience. The dissertation concludes with a presentation of the empirical and methodological contributions of the research, followed by a critical reflection on its limitations and the identification of future avenues of study

    Design revolutions: IASDR 2019 Conference Proceedings. Volume 4: Learning, Technology, Thinking

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    In September 2019 Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University was honoured to host the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) under the unifying theme of DESIGN REVOLUTIONS. This was the first time the conference had been held in the UK. Through key research themes across nine conference tracks – Change, Learning, Living, Making, People, Technology, Thinking, Value and Voices – the conference opened up compelling, meaningful and radical dialogue of the role of design in addressing societal and organisational challenges. This Volume 4 includes papers from Learning, Technology and Thinking tracks of the conference

    Do Rich Sensory Narrative Cues Affect Audiences’ Food Travel Vlog Narrative Transportation, Attitude, and Food Destination Visit Intention?

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    User-generated travel vlog content is one of the information sources that influence pre-travel decisions and watching experiences. Food travel vlogs provide audiences with not only rich visual and auditory stimuli evoking their “daydreaming” in destinations but also provide them with user-generated original narrative travel stories. Applying the theories of embodied cognition as the research approach, the purpose of the current study is to explore the influence of food travel vlog scripts on audiences’ food sensory experience and behavioural intention. A stimulus-based survey is conducted to examine the influence of rich sensory script-induced virtual food sensory experience. Mental imagery processing and narrative transportation theory are incorporated into an integrated model that illustrates how mental imagery affects narrative transportation, post-attitude, behavioural involvement with food, intention to taste and visit intention. Three hundred and fifty-four questionnaires were collected via Amazon Turk Mechanism and structural equation modelling is adopted to analyse the data. The results show that mental imagery quantity and modality have positively influenced audiences’ feeling of being hooked, and mental imagery quantity, modality and valence have a positive influence on audience attitude. The feeling of being hooked has a direct positive influence on visit intention. The post-attitude indirectly positively influences visit intention via food involvement and intention to taste. The results also show that preattitude and familiarity negatively moderate two sets of relationships, mental imagery and being hooked, mental imagery and post-attitude. Craving positively moderates food involvement, intention to taste and visit intention. Last but not the least, the significant 17 influence of the co-variants such as gender, novelty seeking, food neophobia and prior experience are also correlated to the feeling of being hooked and post-attitude. Based on these findings, a range of recommendations is proposed

    Unsettling Translation

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    This collection engages with translation and interpreting from a diverse but complementary range of perspectives, in dialogue with the seminal work of Theo Hermans. A foundational figure in the field, Hermans’s scholarly engagement with translation spans several key areas, including history of translation, metaphor, norms, ethics, ideology, methodology, and the critical reconceptualization of the positioning of the translator and of translation itself as a social and hermeneutic practice. Those he has mentored or inspired through his lectures and pioneering publications over the years are now household names in the field, with many represented in this volume. They come together here both to critically re-examine translation as a social, political and conceptual site of negotiation and to celebrate his contributions to the field. The volume opens with an extended introduction and personal tribute by the editor, which situates Hermans’s work within the broader development of critical thinking about translation from the 1970s onward. This is followed by five parts, each addressing a theme that has been broadly taken up by Theo Hermans in his own work: translational epistemologies; historicizing translation; performing translation; centres and peripheries; and digital encounters. This is important reading for translation scholars, researchers and advanced students on courses covering key trends and theories in translation studies, and those engaging with the history of the discipline

    Persona Play in Videogame Livestreaming: An Ethnography of Performance on Twitch

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    Twitch.tv (‘Twitch’) is a livestreaming platform known for the live broadcasting (‘streaming’) of videogame-related content. It is also the most popular livestreaming platform in most countries. Drawing upon over one thousand hours of ethnographic observation across twenty-one Twitch channels, and six months of part-time streaming, this thesis investigates how streaming persona is constructed and performed on Twitch. Streaming persona, the thesis posits, is to be differentiated from more straightforward readings of streamer identity as performance. This thesis instead shows that streaming persona is constructed and performed collectively by both human and nonhuman actors in a Twitch stream. It does this by intervening in five core areas of interdisciplinary concern. The first of these explores new ways of understanding perceptions of authenticity that are constructed and denied as a result of streamer decisions, including an analysis of ways that gendered streamer performances affect perceptions of authenticity. Secondly, this thesis presents a new perspective on the conflicting and negotiated agencies of different stream actors during a stream, including games and the Twitch platform as nonhuman actors. The third core area of interest extends existing scholarship on moderation and governance by investigating boundary-work as a playful activity performed by multiple stream actors, including focused examinations of boundary-work associated with game-centric practices, such as spoiling content, and toxic behaviours. Fourthly, this thesis presents a highly novel exploration of how time on Twitch is arranged and experienced differently by different stream actors and the associated temporal politics of the platform. And fifthly, it intervenes in existing research on both games and Twitch by examining (digital) games as stream actors that perform alongside the streamer, spectators, and platform, thereby presenting new ways to understand games, game play, and why streaming and spectating game play are compelling activities. The concept of streaming persona allows for an exploration of how social identities are constructed and performed through and with the Twitch platform and its users. As such, it provides novel insights into the sociality, culture, politics, and economics of Twitch

    Teens’ screens: the places, values, and roles of film consumption and cinema-going for young audiences

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    This thesis is an investigation into the practices, values, and roles of cinemagoing and film-watching for contemporary British teenagers using qualitative research methods. My key concern is with how 13-18 year olds from different backgrounds define and discuss their film consumption, and visits to different cinemas, in the wider contexts of their leisure, cultural, and media practices. This focus stems from the scholarly appeal for a social contextualization of audiences and the structures that inform peoples’ consumption practice. Many groups experience barriers to participation with particular cinemas that are not simply a consequence of economic deprivation or a lack of media literacy. These are barriers that are felt at the level of what Bourdieu calls the habitus, the system of cultural tastes and dispositions that are lived at the physical or bodily level. To this end, I conducted focus groups, interviews, and participant observation encounters with 42 teenagers in different settings within Norwich and Norfolk. Data analysis is undertaken via the application of a coding system, formulated through a Bourdieusian conceptual lens. I consider participants’ film and media consumption practices in relation to area of residence, sociocultural preferences and friendship formations, whilst also considering issues of identity, education, and parental practices. As part of the process I present the case of specialised film and cinema-going as a case-study in order to address a concern about the dearth of young audiences engaging with specialised cinema. The rich, deep qualitative data collected has enabled me to argue that generally young people’s socio-economic, geographic, familial, peer-grouping, and educational contexts remained a significant influence on film viewing practices, tastes, and gratifications, although some anomalies were present. My research therefore presents new findings on how different groups of young people attach diverse meanings and roles to film viewing practices, texts and locations in cinemas and beyond

    The Reception of Thai Boys Love Series in China: Consumption, Imagination, and Friction

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    Starting from the mid 2010s, the world has witnessed the spectacularly rapid rise of Thai Boys Love series, TV series produced in Thailand that center around the homoromantic and/or homoerotic stories of one or more young, physically attractive, and masculine-identified male-male couple(s). The prevalence of these series is not only present within China’s intricate and distinctive social landscape. In fact, China, with millions of energized and devoted enthusiasts, is perhaps the most significant international market for Thai Boys Love series, and these series are indisputably the most popular non-animated male-male-love media in China nowadays. Guided by three subtopics, consumption, imagination, and friction, this thesis explores the reception of Thai Boys Love series in China, casting light on the Chinese consumers of these series, including viewers/fans, subtitle groups, and event organizers, in relation to the complex societal, historical, and ideological dynamics in contemporary China. The detailed introduction in the beginning on the development of Thai Boys Love series in Thailand and their trajectory in China sets the stage for this thesis to delve into four noteworthy aspects regarding the reception of these series in China. First, it unveils the carnivalesque consumption of Thai Boys Love series safeguarded largely by the various self-censoring strategies most consumers are practicing to get around the dominant but porous governmental censorship. Second, it examines the alternative unbounded world portrayed in these series that appeals to most viewers given the pressures and difficulties they have to confront in their day-to-day lives. Third, it indicates the problematic consequences these series may render in terms of how they promote and reinforce the fantasized “gay paradise” stereotype toward Thailand and the hegemonic “gay archetype” image to regulate gay men and marginalize some members in the gay community. Fourth, it explicates the actual vulnerability of the alleged “Chinese-Thai romance” under the rise of nationalistic sentiments as well as the comeback of Sinocentrism among most Chinese people. It ends with a reflective discussion about this thesis, the limitations, and possible directions for future research. This thesis is based on my close reading of the most well-received Thai Boys Love series from 2014 to April 2021, my extensive online observations since 2016, and a wide variety of secondary sources in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai.Bachelor of Art
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